


In the Midnight Garden

by Androktones



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Confident Cullen Rutherford, Cullen Smut, Cullenlingus, F/M, Romance, Shameless Smut, party time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-23
Updated: 2016-08-23
Packaged: 2018-08-10 15:04:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7849750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Androktones/pseuds/Androktones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While at a ball marking the conclusion of peace talks between Orlais and Fereldan, Commander Cullen steals his lover away for a private celebration of their own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Midnight Garden

"In the Midnight Garden"

 

Somehow she had ended up at yet another Orlesian ball. To be fair, at least the Inquisition’s presence at this particular soiree was not to stop the assassination of an Empress and the end of the world.

…or so she hoped.

Rather, Empress Celene of Orlais and King Alistair of Fereldan had decided that a fete was necessary to cement the recent peace talks, and the woman who had brokered those talks needed to be present.

Evelyn smiled. The impeccable decorations at the summer palace in Emprise du Leon, where the Orlesian court escaped the brutal summers of Val Royeaux, was clearly the work of Celene. The incredible selection of cheeses, however, was all Alistair.

She adjusted her gloves- it was growing quite tiresome having people ask to see the mark- and took a quick survey of the ballroom. There were Sera and The Iron Bull, drinking some spiced and very potent alcoholic beverage ladled from a silver tureen bigger than a bathtub. And Dorian, regaling a gaggle of courtiers with tales of Tevinter, Varric offering commentary.  The others were around somewhere…hopefully not getting into trouble.

The band was playing a stately minuet, Alistair and Celene leading the dance – well, truth be told, it was more that Celene was leading Alistair. When the song ended, the Empress made her way over to Evelyn.

The Inquisitor swept a beautifully elegant curtsy, before Celene took her hand and tucked it into the crook of her elbow. A murmur rippled throughout the ballroom-  such familiarity!  

Celene sighed. “Ah, you know courtiers, my dear _Inquisiteur_. The sky is raining fireballs and they think first of whether it will harm their gardens. Come, come. Nous voudrions une boisson (we want a drink).” 

“Pardon me, your grace, but may I borrow your lovely companion?”

Cullen.

Even now, with their relationship the worst kept secret in Thedas, Evelyn’s heart leapt at the sight of him, of his broad shoulders, his golden hair, his sly but somehow shy smile.

Celene laughed. “Of course, Commander. It would hardly do to keep her from you. I expect her back for the waltz, however.”

He bowed. “As you like.”   

Cullen took her hand, led her through the murmuring crowd – _he’s very handsome – look at her dress, Marcher style, for shame – what I wouldn’t give to take his place –_ and he held one of the ornate doors to the side of the ballroom open and guided her through with a hand at the small of her back.

“I found something interesting in the palace today, while you were finishing up the accords with Celene and Alistair.”

Down one hallway, through a drawing room, walking beneath the judging gazes of long dead Emperors and Empresses, and windows etched with a tracery of frost.

“Where are we going?”

“It’s surprise,” Cullen replied, smiling, as they arrived before a set of heavy gilt doors.

He kissed her palm and pushed them open.

It was… _extraordinary_. Curving panes of clear glass yawned up and away, meeting high above their heads in a gracefully arcing dome. Evelyn turned to Cullen, words hitched high in her throat, to find him bathed in golden light from the tapers glittering throughout the room and cast onto the silvered drifts of snow. And though the world outside was muffled in the falling white and coated in a thin sheen of ice, the chamber where they stood was warm, almost balmy. Indeed, the air was redolent with the scent of the flowers which bedecked what seemed like every available surface, exploding in a riot of color from gilt pots and crystalline vases and planter boxes, trailing along silver arbors and reaching down from hanging baskets. Songbirds in golden cages sang quietly in the dark. And still, the snow fell, flakes melting against the glass of this seemingly enchanted garden, unchanged by the bitter cold.

“Oh Cullen,” she breathed, stepping further in, letting her gloved hand trace the petal of a flower where it bent from its gold and blue vase towards her, “it’s _beautiful_.”

“The imperial greenhouse,” he murmured from beside her, watching her as she turned next to smell an orchid glowing moonlight-white in the blackness, “it was built by the last Empress to ensure that the palace had fresh flowers regardless of the weather.”

He extended his hand, leading her first down one path of yellow-blooming trees, then another of vines with flowers the color of a rosy dawn, until she could hardly remember which way was back. And then, without warning, Cullen yanked Evelyn’s hand _hard_ , and she stumbled, but just a bit, before his arm wrapped around her waist, hauling her up onto the very tip of her toes. She could feel his heart beating where her hand lay lightly on his velvet coat.

 “There,” he said softly, lips parted, “I think we are sufficiently lost.”

 She smiled, inhaling the dizzying mixture of a million scents she couldn’t name and one that she would know anywhere, the singular scent among the sharp tingle of cut stems and the heavy softness of roses that was _him_.

“Lost enough for what, I wonder,” she mused, bringing a satin-covered fingertip to trace the scar which bisected his upper lip.

But Cullen was pulling away from her already, rummaging behind a planter which only barely contained a cornucopia of blossoms blooming wide in the snowy night, offering their shades of scarlet and gold and blush to the blank, white drifts outside the glass.

“Here,” he murmured, offering her a flute of champagne, before pouring one for himself and taking a seat on one of the elaborate chaise lounges which some enterprising decorator had placed around the greenhouse.

“I’m sorry for taking you from the party,” Cullen offered, taking a draught of the glittering liquid, “but you know how much I hate these sorts of events. They are much more Josephine’s forte than mine, not that I mind accompanying you, of course-”

The champagne was _delicious_ – it tasted faintly of lemons and tart green apples - and the bubbles suffused Evelyn’s limbs as she watched him speak, the way his lips formed the shape of her name.

“- but I just needed you to myself for a moment, which I selfish, I know. But when I found this place today, I thought it would be the perfect spot to get lost for a moment-“

She finished her champagne and set the glass down on the marble floor.

“Cullen,” she murmured.

Emotions warred on his face – surprise first, fading into confusion, which sank swiftly into understanding as he, too, drained his glass and set it aside, his eyes deepening to amber. 

“Yes, Evelyn?” He whispered.

As soon as his flute touched the paving stones she was astride him, hitching her skirts up enough to swing a stockinged leg up and across his lap. He was already growing hard and she pressed her lips to his, chasing the syllables of her own name and the last hints of champagne where they fizzed on his tongue. Cullen groaned softly, a hand wrapping around her waist and another cupping the curve of her skull, fingers curled into her elaborately braided and pinned hair.

“We shouldn’t,” he murmured between kisses, breath gusting through his nose, “we’ll be noticed soon, someone will – Maker have _mercy_ ,” he gasped as she rocked forward, sliding the seam of her cunt against his rapidly growing arousal.

“I don’t care,” she whispered, eyes glinting in the candlelight, “but of course, whatever makes you comfortable. More champagne?”

His voice was strangled as he replied, “yes,” but when she stood, retrieving her discarded glass and walking over to the place where Cullen had squirreled away a bottle of Celene’s private stock, he sighed, though if it was in relief or disappointment, she was not sure.

Evelyn picked up the delicate bottle in one hand and, while turned away from where he sat ramrod straight on the chaise, used the fingers of the other to loosen the lacings on the front of her gown, letting the neckline fall until it just rested at the peak of her breasts’ swell, kept up only where it caught the top seam of her corset.

Turning back towards Cullen, she took in the sight of his lips, kiss-swollen already, the pink tinge rising high on his cheekbones and, despite his best efforts, the still obvious ridge of his cock pressing against the fabric of his trousers. Tawny eyes widened as he took in the expanse of skin across her chest, bared now to his gaze, but he offered her his glass only after she had poured herself another. Evelyn filled it to the top.

When he brought it to his lips, Evelyn dipped her gloved fingertips into her own glass, the sparkling liquid seeping into the dark satin wreathing her digits. Cullen watched, rapt, the hand now holding his glass shaking ever so slightly, as she brought the damp fabric to her lips and _sucked_.

He choked.

“Shhh,” she whispered, a laugh lilting her voice as she withdrew her fingertips from between her lips and submerging them again into the glass.

A few drops across her collarbones, the seam of her lips, tracing the curves of her breasts, all in the Imperial Greenhouse with snow fluttering outside and dancing and politics only corridors away – it was _obscene_ and so _decadent_ , and Evelyn stepped towards her Commander again, taking a delicate sip of the still-fizzing champagne. Cullen’s fingers tightened hard enough around the stem of his flute that it made a crystalline whine in protest. He set it down against the flagstones.

“Maker take you,” he hissed, hands curling hard around her hips as he yanked her forward, his lips sealing against the spot where the champagne still glistened in the divot of her collarbones. Evelyn gasped as his teeth grazed her there and down, chasing the opalescent trail across the tops of her heaving breasts, to the valley where it pooled between the pert globes, pushed high and tight by her corset. Heat licked up the notches of her spine as his tongue darted between the cleft and back up to trace the wing of a collarbone.

But her gloved hand, damp from the champagne, twisted in the velvet of his waistcoat and she pushed, guiding him until he sat back against the arm of the chaise lounge. And then she was lying sanguine near his knees, her breasts peeking indelicately from beneath lace trim and glowing moonlight white in the snowy dark.

When her cool hand slipped beneath the waistband of his trousers, Cullen’s tawny head thumped back against the darkly burnished wood of the chaise. The damp satin was so impossibly soft where he ached, hard and hot, and the way her lips, flushed with desire, parted lushly as she pushed his breeches down to his thighs…he gritted his teeth.  

“Oh, Maker,” he gasped as her thumb ghosted over his tip, gathering the opalescent liquid there, the satin just a shade shy of unbearable against his sensitive skin.

Tilting her glass ever so slightly, Evelyn dripped a trail of the champagne down the line of his shaft and he hissed at the cool contact, though it turned swiftly into a moan rumbling darkly in his chest as she followed the path with the barest tip of her tongue, tracing the tart glisten and the veins which pulsed beneath his skin.

“ _Je t'ai envie (I want you),”_ she murmured, pressing kisses to the hot, hard length of him, darting out to taste his tip.

It was only when she reached the crown of his cock that Evelyn closed her lips around him and he gasped, hard, a hand settling with white knuckles on the arm of the chaise lounge by his ear and the other landing on her head as she hummed, bobbed, withdrew. With one hand, she ringed the base of him, squeezing the throbbing length, and with the other she cupped his rear, pressing him closer to her plush lips. Evelyn released him with an obscene _pop_.

“More?” She whispered, dark blue eyes meeting his own amber from beneath a seductive fan of soot-black lashes.

“No,” he replied, and she frowned.

And then Cullen plucked the glass from her gloved fingers and, almost stomach-tiltingly fast, had her pressed against the cushions of the chaise lounge.

“No more teasing,” he growled, hands slipping beneath her petticoats to ruck them up her thighs. The silk rustled and she craned towards him to allow them higher until the layers of delicate fabric crumpled at her waist.

Her commander could also play this game, and he was making it eminently obvious as he let droplets of the fizzing liquid pool in the divot of her belly button and _down_ , until she arced hard away from the cushions as the cool drops touched her seam through the barely-there lace that covered her from his hard gaze.

“Up,” he said darkly, almost growling, and she obeyed, cunt dripping with more than champagne now as he bent her over the curving arm of the chaise, her skirts falling up and over her shoulders, tickling the nape of her neck. She gasped, tight and high, as Cullen’s breath fanned hot over the place where she most ached for his touch. 

His tongue pressed against her through the damp fabric, spearing within her for a moment before dragging down; the ridges of the lace against her pearl made her start with pleasure, and only his strong fingers wrapped iron-hard around her hipbone kept her still as he slowly, oh so slowly, dragged the sopping lace to one side, tongue again darting out to taste her. She gasped and he groaned, the sound dark as honey and intoxicating as the champagne which thrummed through her sparking veins and blended with hot, slick desire between her legs.

It was _sin_ , the way his stubble burned against her thighs as he lapped at her, tasting, devouring, conquering, one hand holding her smallclothes away and the other running up and down her thighs.

“Cullen, _Baise-moi. (Fuck me)_ ” she gasped out, throat somehow already raw from his ministrations, her fingers curling white against the wood and satin arm of the couch.

He did not stop his assault, but slowly drew the sodden scrap of lace down her thighs until they snagged where her knees pressed against the cushions.

“Prends-moi, (take me)” she moaned, and his hand tightened, a growl threatening to erupt from between his scarred lips.

And then he was parting her without preamble, his cock so hot and filling as the hand at her hip darted between her legs, rolling her pearl between his thumb and forefinger.

“Oh, _mon couer_ (my heart),” she gasped, her clenched eyes filling with white sparks like the snow drifting down outside. She was already so close.

“Evelyn, _fuck,_ ” he growled, his hand on her losing its rhythm for a moment.

“ _Plus fort, (_ Harder),” she moaned, and he obliged, hips snapping against her rear, his breath coming in hard pants and the buttons of his waistcoat jangling with every thrust. 

She squeezed her thighs together, tightening around his hot length, and Cullen moaned, “yes, _yes_ , just like that,” his free hand slipping beneath her arms pillowed on the edge of the couch to cup a breast where it had to come loose from her corset. He thumbed her nipple in time to his circling her clit, and Evelyn was electric, lightning arcing from that tight bud where it rasped against the callouses of his fingers to where he rolled that delicate pearl at the jointure of her thighs, where his cock was filling every place she had ever felt empty.

“Come for me,” Cullen growled, but she squeezed his length in reply, and he huffed out a breath, before he was coming instead, pistoning as he sank within her fully, the hand at her breast falling to her hip, holding her against him, hard, as he thrust once, and twice more, gasping her name out to the songbirds still tittering in the half dark and the drifting snow.

Still within her, he rubbed at her where she still throbbed, where Evelyn was slick with their combined desire and the barest hint of champagne.

“Oh, _mon couer, mon amour_ (my heart, my love) _…_ ah!”

And then she was arcing hard against him, his hand on her throat as he turned her head to his plundering mouth, to his tongue where it tasted the seam of her lips as she shook.

“Oh, Maker, help me,” he hissed, tearing his mouth from hers, as his length still within her pulsed anew as she rippled and quaked around him, “you are torture.”

Evelyn did not reply to his words, rather whispering his name, _CullenCullenyesCullen_ to the dancing, arcing flakes outside the glass and the flowers strewn around them. Finally, both sated, he withdrew, taking a handkerchief from his breast pocket to clean her of their mingled arousal. He tucked a delicate pink blossom plucked from the nearest planter behind her ear, kissing her neck gently.

Evelyn curled against his side, her heart still pounding even as the sweat on their bodies cooled and the snow continued to drift down outside.

“You’ve never done that before,” Cullen murmured, his hand tracing the curve of her hip as he smoothed her elaborate Marcher skirts back down.

Evelyn lazily opened her eyes.

“Done what?”

“Spoken Orlesian…” his tongue traced the scar on his upper lip. “I liked it.”

She laughed, slapping his shoulder half-heartedly. “What good are peace talks if you Fereldans still want to conquer Orlais so badly that it extends to the bedroom?”

He curled his fingers around her jaw and lifted her lips to his. “Imperial greenhouse. And just with you, my love, just with you.” 

* * *

Kudos and comments always appreciated. :)

 


End file.
